Here are the nominations (note: not the inductees, the nominations)
KISS, LL Cool J, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Genesis, Jimmy Cliff, the Hollies, Laura Nyro, Donna Summer, Darlene Love, ABBA, the Chantels and the Stooges.
I'm totally down with six, maybe seven of those names.
But let's look at a few who've never even been nominated yet, especially from a Detroit perspective. Alice Cooper (KISS before Alice Cooper?). The MC5. Grand Funk. Mitch Ryder.
The Stooges have been nominated before. They didn't get in. They were nominated last year, too. The fact that Iggy and the Ashetons played Madonna songs (at Madge's request) two years before; and the fact that Ron Asheton died last year before the inductees were announced (and James Williamson had told me in a much-circulated interview that if the Stooges were inducted last year, he'd play with them at the induction for the first time in years), and the fact that R.E.M. and Patti Smith performed "I Wanna Be Your Dog" two years ago as sort of a protest didn't make the people who voted on this budge. If I were the Stooges, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves. But then, it took the Velvets five years to get in...and Black Sabbath just as long.
KISS before the New York Dolls? The Red Hot Chili Peppers? The Red Hot Chili Peppers??? Don't care they have a Michigan connection in Chad. They also have a connection to what my friend Johnny Angel once dubbed "Asshole rock. " I repeat: The Red Hot Chili Peppers???
What a joke... (P.S. It should be noted the "awards" or whatever you wanna call them are no reflection on the museum itself, which is a separate entity from the induction thing and is curated by former Michigander and our friend, Howard Kramer, and is said to be a perfectly fine place to visit if you're in Cleveland...)
